I know this has nothing to do with programming, but this is one of those things that drives me crazy. I have a Kindle, I love my Kindle, I love reading before bed on My Kindle, then picking up where i left off on my Droid when I’m standing in line at Disney.
Unfortunately, I think that e-books will not make it. At least not without some major changes in publishers attitudes. A while back, Amazon started letting publishers (not by choice) set pricing for Kindle editions. Now, In my pessimistic point of view, they are beginning to strategically kill the media.
Take a look below – this is happening more and more often when i am looking for a new book.
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At lease Under the Dome is a few dollars less for the ‘free to replicate’ Kindle edition. The Glass Castle on the other hand is less expensive to purchase the tangible paperback that has actual hard costs! I do not expect these books to be free, but to charge more for an electronic version than you do for a tangible version is inexplicable.
The only thing i can think of that would prevent these e-books from sold at $5 or so, is that the publishers, who are now setting the sale price, must be in some way making a profit on the production of the paperbacks. Why else would they care? I can’t imagine how the publishers would not make more profit on e-books than any other media. There are no hard costs (beyond licensing etc.) to cut into the profit % that pays for the system.
As much as I would like to read The Glass Castle – I like obscure memoirs…, I can’t bring myself to pay $9.99 for it when i can buy it for a flat $9 (no tax, and i get free shipping with my Prime account). I know it is only .99 but this is just one instance, i have seen a several dollar difference between versions before. Maybe i’ll just go download a torrent of the audio book or find a PDF version… When will publishers, record companies, tv studios, etc.. get it through their skulls.. give people what they want, how they want it and we will happily pay a fair price for it. When they limit the experience, use crazy DRM, or force us to jump through hoops – we will just go get it free somewhere else.